Archive for the 'Cultural' Category

In 2016, I visited Rome for a week. On a sunny Sunday, I rented a bike to ride the Via Appia Antica, or the Appian Way. This ancient road has led into Rome for 2,400 years. Untold drovers, farmers, soldiers, citizens, and slaves have worn deep ruts in the ancient road, deep enough to occasionally jack knife my bicycle’s front wheel.

Appia Antica is lined with the ruins of hundreds of monuments and memorials. As I rode along I snapped a photo of a particularly well-preserved memorial. It wasn’t until I got home that I inspected that photo carefully. It was not a good photo – a mindless snapshot, in fact – but the ancient memorial was captured in good detail. I looked at the figures and the names.

Behold my shitty snapshot!

It featured a Roman man named Caius (Gaius) Rabirius Postumus Hermadorus. In the center was his wife, who had taken the name Rabiria Demaris. On the right was an image of their “Usia Prima Sacerdos”, or family god. She was Isidis, or Isis, the Egyptian goddess who leads the dead to the afterlife.

I had never heard of this Rabirius fellow. I wondered who he was, why his memorial was so nifty, and why he had taken an Egyptian goddess to represent his family.

This led me on a fascinating journey into the most turbulent period in Roman history: the dawn of the Imperium. Rabirius may have been a nobody, but he was heavily involved with the most famous Romans of his day.

We should begin by backing up a bit and looking into Rabirius’ past. He was born in a patrician family and as a young man was adopted by his uncle, a senator also named Gaius Rabirius. The elder Gaius Rabirius was determined to build a legacy with this boy, but little did the old man know that a rash decision would put his entire family and fortune in jeopardy – an object lesson the young Rabirius would fail to learn…

The elder Rabirius was from a respected family and by 100 BCE had become a senator of Rome. At that time, the republic was in turmoil. The optimates (the ruling elite) were squaring off against the populares (dedicated to helping the plebeians). In the senate, battle lines were being drawn.

What the optimates and populares may have looked like.

Two great generals – Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Gaius Marius – represented the two sides. Sulla was an optimate who believed the republic should be ruled by wealthy patrician families. He scorned the recent land reforms being introduced by the populares. Marius, whose military reforms included opening the army to plebs, had become sympathetic to the cause of the populares. These two influential men had influential followers in the senate. Things were heating up.

In 100 BCE, Marius formed a political circle with the tribune of the plebs, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and his pal Gaius Servilius Glaucia. Marius became the anvil while Saturninus and Glaucia pounded away like hammers, beating out land reform laws that favored the plebeians and common citizens, usually at the cost of the wealthy land-owning optimates. As you can imagine, the entrenched wealthy elite weren’t going to take this sitting down. Their champion Sulla had some friends, too. He also had soldiers willing to do anything for him.

Sulla (L) and Marius (R).

When Saturninus successfully pushed through some land reform laws, Sulla stepped in. He and his optimate buddies drafted decrees that rolled back the reforms and threatened violent reprisals against anyone who dared oppose them. The senate was now split, with violence sure to follow.

In 99 BCE there were important elections. Saturninus and Glaucius kept their seats. But in their zeal to win at any cost, they decided it was a good idea to blatantly murder the optimate candidate for the consulship of Rome, a man named Gaius Memmius. Now, Memmius may not have been a beloved character, but to slaughter him during the ballot count was a bit much, even for the plebeians of Rome.

Things started getting out of hand.

The people went ballistic and demanded justice against the murderers. The senate declared Saturninus and Glaucius enemies of Rome. The two men fled to a defensible building on the Capitoline hill. Roman sentries cut off their water supply and began a siege. Marius, whose reputation had saved him from the taint of being associated with Saturninus and Glaucius, stepped in and offered the men safe passage to the old senate house known as the Curia Hostilia. Marius assured Saturninus and Glaucius that if they went with him willingly they would receive a fair trial and possibly even exoneration. The two men agreed. Marius guided them safely to the Curia Hostilia.

Enter the elder Gaius Rabirius.

Rabirius was an old school optimate. He believed in the supremacy of the landed aristocracy and he was determined to see any populist reforms strangled in the crib. In his mind, he could not afford to have Saturninus and Glaucius escape justice. They were dangerous and had to be stopped. So Rabirius and a group of his best friends climbed up the walls of the Curia Hostilia, peeled back some of the roof tiles and proceeded to rain huge rocks down onto Saturninus, Glaucius, and a bunch of their followers. They were literally shooting fish in a barrel and all the men inside the Curia were slaughtered in a fairly horrific way.

The Curia Julia replaced the Curia Hostilia in 53 BCE.

Rome may have been a wild and wooly place where powerful men could get away with murder, but there were limits and Rabirius had crossed them. One of the men killed inside the Curia Hostilia had a nephew named Titus Labienus. Labienus was not happy that his uncle was summarily executed by a gang of wealthy optimates. But the optimates maintained a solid grip on Rome. Rabirius and his gang were unofficially excused of their crimes. The fact that Rabirius and his pals remained not only free but able to retain their senate seats galled young Titus Labienus. But the optimates were in control and there was little he could do.

Fast forward to 63 BCE. The still-seething Labineus visited his new pal, a populist Roman senator named Julius Caesar. He wanted Caesar to provide justice for his uncle’s killer, that awful old man Gaius Rabirius, who still sat in the senate house.

Caesar was from an influential family and though he was sympathetic to the populares he also considered himself a law-and-order kind of guy. He wanted to teach the senate an object lesson in what happens when you excuse extra-legal executions, and he wanted to do it legally. This would put the optimates on notice that Rome was no longer a free-for-all, and that good civic reforms could not be easily reversed by dictums from the optimates.

Actor Ciaran Hinds was the best Julius Caesar EVAR.

So Caesar revived a very old criminal statute known as Perduello, a form of high treason. On the senate floor, he leveled the charge of Perduello at Gaius Rabirius. If convicted, the punishment was death – and not just any death. Those guilty of Perduello would be thrown from the Tarpeian Rock, a seventy foot cliff at the summit of the Capitoline Hill. Those who survived the fall would be left to die slowly. No one would assist them. Their assets would be seized and their houses razed to the ground. The elder Gaius Rabirius was in a world of shit.

In addition to being a craven murderer, Gaius Rabirius was also a resourceful man. He knew the optimates in the senate still held sway. He reached out to them and they responded. Just as the people were urging their senators to declare Rabirius guilty, the optimate consul of Rome pulled down the military flag from the Janiculum hill, a signal that the consul had officially dissolved the seated assembly. No conclusion of guilt could be leveled against Gaius Rabirius.

With no findings, there was no conviction. Rabirius was alive, but he was not exonerated. So he hired the best damn attorney in all of Rome: Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero was not just a lawyer; he was considered one of the greatest orators and political thinkers of his age. His reputation resounds down the millenia, and most Roman scholars consider him to be one of the most thoughtful and brilliant Romans who ever lived. Cicero took the case. He liked hard cases.

Cicero looking very statesman-like.

There was no point in proving the innocence of Gaius Rabirius. He was caught red-handed after the events at the Curia Hostilia those many years ago. There was zero doubt he had led the murders of Saturninus and Glacius. So Cicero took another tack: obfuscate and re-direct. His speech in defense of Gaius Rabirius survives and is known as “Pro Rabirio Reo Perduellionis” (In Defense of Rabirius Accused of Treason). In it, Cicero asks the senate to recall recent acts of political murder that went not only unpunished, but became damn near codified. Before he levels an outright claim of hypocrisy at his fellow senators, he proceeds to ramble through a huge chunk of Roman history, replete with its vendettas, conspiracies, and extra-legal murders.

If this is the history and hallmark of Rome, Cicero asks, who are we to condemn Gaius Rabirius for continuing this state of affairs? By what right does Rome resurrect this outdated charge of Perduello? Why now? And why Rabirius? Is it because of…maybe…I dunno…a hypocritical political vendetta maybe? Hmm?

Loathe as I am to condense Cicero’s brilliant (and outrageously cynical) “Pro Rabirio Reo Perduellionis” to such a short synopsis, I must. For we must now return to the story of Gaius Rabirius’ adopted son Gaius Rabirius Postumus. Suffice it to say the elder Rabirius was acquitted and retained his seat and position. Hats off to Cicero for accomplishing the improbable. He will return to our story…

Young Rabirius Postumus training to become a psycho.

Young Gaius Rabirius Postumus studied hard. He learned oration and law and got pretty good at it. His father’s acquittal kept the family name reasonably pure, so young Rabirius had a good chance of making his own mark in the senate of Rome. And so he did. But like his father, his impetuous nature would lead him into serious trouble.

In the intervening years between the senatorships of the elder Rabirius and the young Rabirius, many of the same players were still on the stage. Cicero was still a respected senator, as was Julius Caesar. Young Gaius Rabirius Postumus took a seat alongside them. He was an optimate and a conservative, but even if you were in the majority, getting political allies was never easy. You had to hitch a ride on the biggest star you could find and young Rabirius chose Gnaeus Pompey Magnus – Pompey the Great. Pompey was the grandaddy of the conservative optimates. A good choice.

Pompey was a tremendously successful and ruthless general. He had fought brilliantly in foreign wars as well as a civil wars at the head of Sulla’s armies during the pitched battles between the populares and optimates. He put down rebellions in Sicily and Africa. He mopped up Spartacus’ slave army during the Third Servile War, hunting down and massacring 6,000 men, women, and children. He wiped out Mediterranean piracy, then soundly defeated Mithridates in Armenia, ending decades of failure with a resounding victory. He “pacified” Syria and Judea and enjoyed no less than three triumphs in Rome.

Pompey looking very Magnus.

In short, Pompey was the very definition of a victorious Roman general. Now that he sat as one of the two consuls of Rome, young Gaius Rabirius Postumus danced his way into Pompey’s sphere and soon gained favor. It’s good to have powerful friends, but Rabirius would soon learn that if you pledge yourself to the Godfather, it may not work out as well as you expect.

In 58 BCE, there were some stirrings in Egypt. The Ptolemaic King of Egypt (Ptolemy XII Auletes, which means “flute-player”) was in some serious trouble. When Rome conquered his brother’s kingdom of Cyprus, Ptolemy XII famously did – and said – nothing. This silence proved unpopular among the local Egyptians. But Ptolemy XII’s excessive taxes were even less popular.

Ptolemy XII Auletes: Cleo’s pappy and consummate fuck-up.

Ptolemy XII needed to raise those taxes to pay back his Roman creditors. Among those creditors was Gaius Rabirius Postumus, who had sunk a huge chunk of his family fortune into Ptolemy’s debt obligations, hoping for a massive return once the Egyptian king got his shit together and stabilized his rule. But that wasn’t going to happen. The Roman debt drove the taxes, which angered a mob already enraged about his political capitulation to the Roman foreigners. The Egyptian people had had enough. They stormed the palace and the king ran off to Rome with his soon-to-be-famous daughter, Cleopatra. His other daughter, Berenice IV, took the Egyptian throne.

In Rome, Pompey housed Ptolemy XII and the cute-as-a-button Cleopatra. Pompey stood up in the senate house, decrying the unfairness of Ptolemy’s exile. After all, he was a friend of Rome who kept his mouth shut about Cyprus. He should be reinstated, by force if necessary.

What Cleopatra almost certainly looked like.

But the senate was well aware of what was going on. The Pompey faction was dumb enough to lend Ptolemy huge sums of money, and they lost that bet. In the senate’s mind, it was tough nuggets. They would not spill Roman blood to reinstate a king whose poor judgment and sloppy accounting had gotten his dumb ass kicked out of Egypt. It was all a ploy to claw back their investment losses, and that’s not good enough. The senate house filled with a resounding NO.

This did not sit well with young Rabirius. Pompey could afford the losses but Rabirius and his fellow back-benchers were ruined. Rabirius pleaded with Pompey to come up with some kind of solution. There must be a way to get Ptolemy XII back on the throne and get the tax revenue rolling again. Pompey had an idea…

Back in the old days when Pompey was fighting the pirates on the Mediterranean, there was a very skillful and discreet commander named Aulus Gabinius. The two men saw eye-to-eye on most things, and like most men in Pompey’s orbit, Gabinius was a very ambitious fellow. Pompey drew up a plan for a bit of mercenary warfare in Egypt. He convinced Ptolemy to pay Gabinius 10,000 talents to bankroll a mercenary army. This was illegal, but by keeping his own money out of the equation, Pompey had some plausible deniability.

Gabinius put together his private invasion force, which included a young commander named Marc Antony – a man who would one day return to Egypt in a big way. The Roman mercenaries sailed to Egypt and sacked Alexandria. Berenice IV surrendered the palace and begged for her father’s mercy. Ptolemy took back his throne and had Berenice and all her entourage executed. The dust settled and commander Marc Antony was introduced to the 14-year-old Cleopatra. But that romance would have to wait. Marc Antony had big things happening in Rome, so he sailed home.

Gabinius’ men would stay on in Alexandria to enforce Roman support of Ptolemy XII, and they became known as the Gabiniani. (These 2500 soldiers went native pretty quickly and would one day support Ptolemy’s son, the adolescent Ptolemy XIII, against Julius Caesar in the fight to place Cleopatra on the throne.)

Marc Antony during his stint as a drunk Welshman.

Anyway, now that Ptolemy XII was back in charge, the problem of his debts still remained. Gaius Rabirius Postumus was particularly pushy about it. He sent endless letters demanding payment. Ptolemy responded with claims of poverty. The treasury was bare. The best the king could do was IOU’s and promises. This did not sit well with the frustrated Rabirius. He took his complaints to Pompey the Great, who told the young upstart to work something out with Ptolemy. Pompey had done what he promised to do; the rest was up to Rabirius.

To shut up his annoying Roman creditor, Ptolemy made Rabirius an offer: come to Egypt and serve as the Minister of Finance. Surely the smart young Roman would have no problem levying taxes and maybe skimming a bit off the top to make back those losses. Rabirius knew nothing about national finance, but this was the only path offered to restore his fortune, so he accepted.

Rabirius sailed to Alexandria and got to work. He wanted his money back ASAP so the first thing he did was ramp up taxation toot sweet. It had apparently not occurred to him that this same greedy behavior had caused the overthrow of the king, but Rabirius probably figured that Ptolemy got the boot because of his political alliance with Rome, not because of taxes. And now that the Gabiniani were ensconced in Alexandria, he didn’t have to worry about any more citizen revolts.

So the taxes went up and up, and Rabirius skimmed off the top with wild abandon. He wanted to rebuild his lost investment as quickly as humanly possible and he assumed the Gabiniani would guarantee his authority to do so. He was wrong.

Within a year, there was another massive citizen revolt. The Gabiniani were unable or unwilling to suppress it. Ptolemy, being a wily fellow, knew the people had no love for Romans so he pointed the finger of blame directly at Rabirius. What the king didn’t expect was an armed attack on the treasury. He moved quickly to put Rabirius in a prison cell to save him from the angry mob.

We don’t need your steenking taxes!

The king calmly informed the mob that Rabirius would go on trial like any other criminal. But the king was also keenly aware that if Rabirius was convicted and executed, his other Roman creditors would go ballistic and he may even lose the support of Rome. So in late autumn, he had Rabirius released from prison and secreted aboard a ship bound for Rome.

Back in Rome, Gaius Rabirius Postumus was an unhappy camper. He escaped Alexandria with his life, but he still lost a huge chunk of his fortune. Being an irascible fellow, he started complaining at the senate house. He used what little authority he had as a senator and friend of Pompey to whip up support for his selfish cause. After all, how could Rome allow this Greek sometimes-king to insult and cheat a senator of Rome?

This was not a smart move.

Pompey’s enemies got wind of Rabirius’ whining and put it all together. Despite the fact that the mercenary restoration of Ptolemy was illegal, it was successful. One would be hard pressed to condemn Pompey for winning yet another successful campaign, even if it was illegal. The people wouldn’t have it. But a Roman senator bilking a province? That was a crime, albeit selectively enforced. They decided to enforce it.

Rabirius getting his ass handed to him.

Gaius Rabirius Postumus was duly accused of De Repetundis, also known as extortion. Roman governors often engaged in extortion (if not wholesale theft) when they ruled a province. But if the governor’s greed led to instability, they were sometimes accused of De Repetundis. The penalty was usually a harsh fine, and sometimes exile. Like his adoptive father before him, Gaius Rabirius Postumus was in a world of shit.

Rather than gaining sympathy from the Roman senate, Rabirius now faced a serious charge. And there was only one man who could get him out of it: Marcus Tullius Cicero. By this time Cicero was truly renown. To hire him was to win your case. He was that good. Like his father before him, Rabirius needed the sharp mind of Rome’s greatest orator to get his dumb ass out of the soup.

But Rabirius had a problem: money. He had very little left. So he leaned on his wife, Rabiria Demaris. Her family was rich as hell. Surely they could help? And they did. Cicero got his payment and took the job. His defense of Rabirius was strikingly similar to his defense of the elder Rabirius, and it also survives to this day as “Pro Rabirio Postumo”. In it, he re-frames Rabirius as a hapless, rash fellow who was merely doing his best to secure his assets as any man would. There’s plenty of “who among us?” interrogatories and obfuscations. It was another piece of Ciceronian legal theater and it worked like a charm.

Cicero defends another Rabirius.

It is not known if Gaius Rabirius Postumus ever got his fortune restored. But he did get aquitted, and he did build a lovely memorial for himself, his wife, and his newly adopted Egyptian goddess on the Via Appia Antica. It’s hard to prove, but I suspect part of Rabirius’ penance was to accept Isis as the family god. He surely had no love for Egypt, so it seems likely the adoption of Isis was forced upon him.

Regardless, the memorial still stands on the Appia Antica for all to see. Tourists take snapshots, but few have ever heard of him and even fewer know his story. Gaius Rabirius Postumus may have been a footnote in Roman history, but around him swirled the timeless stories of mighty ancients like Pompey, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, Ptolemy, and Cleopatra. He was a player in the game at a moment in history when a thriving republic became an unapologetic empire.

Next time you are in Rome, rent a bike and head down the Appia Antica. Just past the Via Degli Eugenii is a monument to the Rabirii. Stop and take a look. There is the face of a man who, though a fool and a scoundrel, was a moving cog in the machine that built western civilization.

When you’re young, anything short of a bikini-clad supermodel firing off an RPG into a Lamborghini is ultra-boring. Everything from your food (blue fruit roll-ups) to your clothes (yellow trousers) to your music (anything that rattles windows) has to be absolutely thrilling.

What an exciting movie may look like.

When you get older, boring things start to become interesting. It starts small with gateway boring things like capers and Bergman films. Before you know it, you’re reading Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations” and listening to Stravinsky. At this point, it’s all over for you. You enjoy boring things and there is no going back.

Now, I’m not talking about universally boring things like waiting in an airport or sitting through Sunday mass. I’m talking about boring things that millions of adults find absolutely riveting. There is only one defense for your favorite boring things: your boring things are much, much more interesting than other people’s boring things.

To that end, here are boring things that I find totally boring:

Golf.

Symphony no2 in Dmaj by Johannes Brahms.

Frozen yogurt.

Now that I’ve outraged thousands of readers, it’s only fair that I come clean with boring things I really enjoy:

Tarkovsky films.

Roman history.

Black eyed peas.

But of all the boring things I enjoy, the most boring yet beloved of them all is…snooker.

How I view a thrilling evening.

It’s hard to explain. This British billiards game is inscrutable to those who don’t know the rules and dreadfully boring to those who do. Despite its popularity in the UK and China, snooker has become a by-word for boring television.

So how can I possibly enjoy snooker?

Because there’s something devilish about it. Unlike most billiards games, snooker isn’t about potting balls in pockets. That’s only half the game. The other half is leaving the cue ball in a hopeless position for your opponent – snookering them. In fact, a good snooker will thrill the crowd like a well-potted ball. It’s the gall of it that makes me smile.

There’s something universally appealing about snooker. Just like every other sport, it’s human agency pushing against entropy to gain an advantage. It’s about precision and cleverness. And of course, luck. Like Fast Eddie said in The Color of Money: “The balls roll funny for everybody, kiddo.” You can do everything right, and sometimes you get hosed. You can do everything wrong and still pull off a home run.

So: since you people made me sit through boring shit like Phish concerts and Iron Man 3, you can sit back while I wax poetic about snooker.

Let’s begin.

This is the snooker table. To win, you pot balls to get the most points. Red balls are 1 point, and the other colored balls are shown with their point values. To score points, you must pot a red ball, then a colored ball, then a red ball, then a colored ball, etc. The red balls stay sunk, but colored balls are retrieved and placed back in their position on the table. You keep potting red balls and colored balls until there are no more red balls left on the table. At that point, you must sink all the colored balls in order: yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, black.

Simple, eh? Well, snooker tables are huge – 12ft by 6ft. Their pockets are very narrow. And the felt is fast as hell. The table is merciless. There is no room for error. This isn’t your local barroom table. Potting a ball on a snooker table is really damn hard. There are no easy shots. But that doesn’t even cover the best part.

When it’s your turn to play, you MUST make contact with a red ball. If you pot it, good for you. You MUST then make contact with a colored ball. If you sink it, hooray. But you MUST at least contact your object ball. If you hit the wrong ball or miss your object ball, your opponent gets points. So, if you cannot easily pot your object ball, you are best served making contact with it, then leaving the cue ball somewhere that utterly screws over your opponent: snooker them. (And yes: that’s where we get the term “I’ve been snookered!” when someone cheats you out of something.)

Snookered. Big time.

In the above image, our hero has already potted a red ball. He is now required to at least contact (if not pot) a colored ball. He CANNOT contact a red ball first. Look at him. He’s fucked. There’s no way he’s going to contact any colored ball. But he has to. These are the moments that make snooker great. Not because someone scored huge points or did something graceful. No. In snooker, you achieve greatness by making your opponent’s life hell.

People who enjoy snooker are looking for three things from a great player: the ability to pot balls, the ability to snooker their opponents into oblivion, and the ability to maintain their cool under immense pressure.

It’s as thrilling as pitching that final out, kicking that game-winning field goal, or defending the net as time runs out.

Snooker is awesome.

FUCK YEAH SNOOKER IS AWESOME!

So there you have it: my favorite boring thing. – snooker. Yeah, I sometimes fall asleep watching it. But more often I am glued to the screen, watching every brilliant pot, every fiendish snooker, every smirk from the vanquished foe. My boring thing is way better than your boring thing. :0)

And I return with Great News! Back in 2011, I formed Nihilists for the GOP (NGOP), a SuperPAC dedicated to the utter destruction of American life. It was our fervent belief that the United States needed to be brought low so it may one day rise again: newer, better, stronger. The endless see-saw between incompetent Republican leadership and band-aid Democratic fixes was leaving our country in the doldrums.

Suddenly, a ray of hope appeared. The GOP was invaded by a virus known as the Tea Party. This modern version of the Know-Nothings morphed the GOP from a party of cynical corporate lackeys into a party of demented extremist morons. The NGOP saw opportunity here. But we had no idea how well it would actually work. How well?

Venal. Stupid. Ignorant. PERFECT.

“How does this help?”, you ask? More likely: “WHAT IN THE FUCKING HELL ARE YOU BABBLING ABOUT?”, you ask?

It’s like this: western democracies are prone to fascism. Fascists aren’t always goose-stepping crazies in leather uniforms. Fascists are often happy friendly smiley people in three-piece suits. But fascism is a road to self-destruction. Like its doppelganger authoritarian-communism, fascism is a monster that devours itself and leaves in its wake misery and death.

How can we avoid this fate? WE DON’T.

Two of the greatest regional democracies on Earth are Japan and Germany. Remember them? After a few decades of fascist blundering, they were utterly destroyed by the sane forces of the Allies. Most importantly: from the ashes rose two nations dedicated to regional stability and civil rights. Not only did they rise; they flourished.

Tokyo 1945 Tokyo today. Notice anything?

Berlin 1945 Berlin today. Any questions?

Back in 2011, the NGOP advocated electing idiotic, amoral, deranged psychopaths like Rick Santorum and Sarah Palin. We assumed they could ably lead us directly into the toilet bowl. We had NO IDEA there would appear on the horizon a candidate so fabulously dumb, so superlatively incompetent, so mindlessly depraved, that all the others would have to bow down to his Supreme Imbecility. NOW WE HAVE THAT MAN.

The Leader of the Free World openly mocking a disabled person.

The NGOP was surprised, to say the least.

You see: we have long ago given up on the dream that America would follow the rest of the civilized world. Our initial fear that Bernie Sanders would win the candidacy and help America join the ranks of sane societies was gleefully dashed by the arrogant forces at the helm of the Democratic party. Always eager to to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the party leadership sunk the USS Sanders and slapped a coat of paint on the tired old battleship Clinton.

Initially, we thought this misstep might actually work. To our delight, we were wrong. She lost big-time.

The president of the United States is a monumentally stupid fascist. To his credit (and our delight), he doesn’t hide it. He REVELS in it, as do his followers.

This is the beginning of the end of America’s unstable flirtation with sort-of-in, sort-of-out fascism. We are now ALL IN.

Sit back and watch the descent. We can’t say exactly what form America’s fall will take, but if we were betting men we’d put some serious cash down on a severe recession, alienation from all our allies, and enough civil strife to choke all areas of public order. In the end, from the ashes of a devastated nation shall rise a new America. Like a parent attending a child who has fallen off his bike and skinned his knee, our allies will be there for us in the end. They shall teach us their ways, and in a few decades we will realize our full potential.

Until then, hold on to your fucking seats because the ride’s about to get very bumpy indeed.